THQ on WiiU: ''much more powerful than the other HD consoles''

[milkyjoe]

HappySqurriel said:

padib said:

True, the hardware metric is flawed to a high degree (non-negligeable).

But the cool thing about the COD metric as compared to the HW metric is that you'll find it very rare that a person owns it on both the 360 and on the PS3 :D They might own in on Wii and one HD twin, but even that's unlikely, right? Even if it happened the percentage would be so low I suspect it to be completely negligeable.

The other cool thing about the COD metric is that it really is a game that a vast majority of the core owns (no matter the platform), and very few casuals owns (from what we understand at least).

What do you think?

I find this argument a little odd because it wasn't that long ago that the frat-boy gamer who makes up the bulk of the COD franchise sales was considered the "Casual Gamer" who should be derided ...

The core problem with all simple metrics trying to determine how large of a "core" audience there is on a platform is there has been massive growth in the number of multi-console households over the past generation. While I could be wrong, I suspect that the typical household with a videogame system probably has 2 or more current generation systems and the Wii is probably in the vast majority of those households. This created an odd situation where, because the core games released to the Wii were mediocre and gamers interested in those types of games would choose to play them on the HD consoles, developers were able to justify producing mediocre Wii games because their sales were better on the HD consoles.

Being that the Wii U is the first to market, Nintendo has an opportunity to start things out differently by establishing strong "core" game sales before their competition is on the market; and this will put the challenge on Sony and Microsoft to produce a compelling alternative to justify buying their system instead of or alongside the Wii U. There is always the possiblity that Sony and Microsoft will focus on hardware performance, but this could become a negative if developers don't want to deal with the added development costs of targeting these systems; and Sony/Microsoft could have to justify a higher price-tag with no visual improvements over their competition.

I would definitely agree with this. COD appeals to the type of gamer who buys annual update franchises every single year, such as COD itself and FIFA/Madden depending on nationality. They wouldn't play a game like NMH no matter the console in a million years.

It's also got big appeal amongst 12 year olds, given how much squeaky voiced profanity and racial stereotyping I heard in my admittedly brief foray into COD multiplayer.